Drone Systems Modeling Intern

Zipline; South San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 22,000 - 36,000; Full time

Job summary

Zipline, the world’s leading drone-delivery company, is seeking an engineering intern to join the Systems Modeling Team and work on system-level problems. You will help design and evaluate models that drive aircraft and fleet decisions, balancing performance and reliability.

You will develop tools, run simulations, and analyze data to support rapid iteration and informed tradeoffs in real-world constraints. This role offers hands-on experience with cutting-edge autonomous logistics systems.

Qualifications

• Fundamental physics understanding: energy, heat transfer, dynamics, fluids.
• Interest in building computational tools and modeling.
• Ability to work across multidisciplinary teams.
• Experience with simulation or modeling projects (academic or personal).

Responsibilities

• Develop computational tools to automate high-level design trades, optimizations, and sensitivity studies
• Improve the performance and flexibility of simulation frameworks
• Build physics-based models that underlie aircraft performance simulations
• Analyze test data to validate vehicle component models

Skills

Python

MATLAB

Julia

Rust

Numerical methods

Physics fundamentals

Systems modeling

Tools

MATLAB

Python

Julia

Rust

Job description

Zipline, the world’s leading drone-delivery company, is seeking an engineering intern to join the Systems Modeling Team and work on system-level problems. You will help design and evaluate models that drive aircraft and fleet decisions, balancing performance and reliability.

You will develop tools, run simulations, and analyze data to support rapid iteration and informed tradeoffs in real-world constraints. This role offers hands-on experience with cutting-edge autonomous logistics systems.